Vilgot Sjoman, Filmmaker Without Taboos, Dies at 81
from the NY Times
Vilgot Sjoman, a Swedish filmmaker whose notoriously risqué “I Am Curious (Yellow),” made in 1967 for $160,000, sufficiently alarmed censors to generate millions at the box office and jump-start a new cinematic explicitness, died on Sunday at a Stockholm hospital. He was 81.
The cause was complications from a brain hemorrhage, the Swedish Joint Committee for Artistic and Literary Professionals said, according to The Associated Press.
“I Am Curious” was not Mr. Sjoman’s first brush with censors, only his most famous. His sexually bold 1964 film “491″ was banned in Sweden and temporarily barred from the United States. His 1966 film, “My Sister, My Love,” was not banned, but its subject — a wild, incestuous love affair between a twin brother and sister — stirred impassioned discussion.
Mr. Sjoman, a protégé of Ingmar Bergman, insisted that his wanderings to forbidden frontiers were in pursuit of honesty, not sensationalism — and many students of film agreed. His avant-garde techniques were often compared to those of French New Wave directors like Jean-Luc Goddard.
“I Am Curious” tells of the social, political and sexual journey of a young Swedish woman. Critics lauded it for its documentary-style techniques, hand-held cameras and interpolation of real and made-up events. But the United States Customs Service was most impressed by its simulated intercourse and not-so-simulated oral sex, and in January 1968 it summarily banned the film from the country as obscene.
That November, a federal appeals court ruled that the movie was protected by the First Amendment, a move that allowed it to be released in March 1969. The movie made $5 million in six months. It remained the most financially successful foreign film in the United States for 23 years.
The new frankness was quickly copied by critically praised films like “Midnight Cowboy” in 1969, but it also led to nudity-filled potboilers about nurses and stewardesses — not to mention “Deep Throat.”
Technorati Tags: Vilgot Sjoman, filmmaker, I Am Curious (Yellow)
